Sign Makers Vinyl

Transfer Tape Overview

What the heck is transfer tape? Here's an excerpt from one of my FAQs:

Transfer tape is basically a really wide roll of masking tape. At hardware stores, you can usually find masking tape in widths of up to one inch. You know, it's a roll that's one inch wide. Well, transfer tape is usually about 12 inches wide or wider. Transfer tape can be purchased at sign making stores, and is absolutely instrumental in making vinyl graphics work properly. You use transfer tape on top of the vinyl to ensure that the vinyl does not stretch and distort when you apply it.

Click Here for a photo of transfer tape in action.

What follows is a more detailed explanation of how Vinyl graphics are processed, and how transfer tape plays into it.

Imagine that this is your vinyl sheet. It is face up, so the blue is the color that you will get on your final decals. The circles indicate where the plotter has cut out your shape. The adhesive of the vinyl is facing down, and the backing is still in place. Imagine that this is just like a sticker sheet you would get in grade school. The stickers are all cut out, but have not yet been peeled off the backing.

This is what your graphics look like after you have "weeded" them. You have cut away all the vinyl that is not part of your design. The white that you see surrounding the blue circles is the non adhesive backing to the vinyl. This is the part that the sticky side of the vinyl does not stick very well to. It sticks well enough to hold them in place, but just barely. Remember, it's just like the sticker sheets you had as a kid. You basically just peeled away everything BUT the actual stickers that you want to use.
At this point, you COULD peel off the stickers (blue circles) and apply them to your prop or project. However, unlike the stickers you had as a kid, the vinyl shapes will stretch very easily. in fact, just peeling them off the backing will cause them to distort.
The adhesive on the back of the vinyl is very tenacious, making it difficult to handle. If the vinyl folds over onto itself once you peel it from the backing, it is almost impossible to unseparate the parts without significantly distorting the shape.
To combat this problem, and to make the graphics easier to handle, we use Transfer Tape!!

This illustration shows the graphics in the above step being laid flat, and a sheet of transfer tape being applied to it. The grey shape is the transfer tape, and it is going on to the vinyl sticky side down.

Here we see the transfer tape attached to the grahpics. When we are ready to apply we peel off the transfer tape to reveal...

The sticky side of the transfer tape with our graphics attached, sticky side out. We can now apply our graphics to anything using the transfer tape to help us handle them. I used a lighter blue to indicate the sticky side of our graphics, where the white in this picture represents the back side of the transfer tape seen in the previous illustration.

	Imagine that this is your vinyl sheet. It is face up, so the blue is the color that you will get on your final decals. The circles indicate where the plotter has cut out your shape. The adhesive of the vinyl is facing down, and the backing is still in place. Imagine that this is just like a sticker sheet you would get in grade school. The stickers are all cut out, but have not yet been peeled off the backing.
	This is what your graphics look like after you have "weeded" them. You have cut away all the vinyl that is not part of your design. The white that you see surrounding the blue circles is the non adhesive backing to the vinyl. This is the part that the sticky side of the vinyl does not stick very well to. It sticks well enough to hold them in place, but just barely. Remember, it's just like the sticker sheets you had as a kid. You basically just peeled away everything BUT the actual stickers that you want to use. At this point, you COULD peel off the stickers (blue circles) and apply them to your prop or project. However, unlike the stickers you had as a kid, the vinyl shapes will stretch very easily. in fact, just peeling them off the backing will cause them to distort. The adhesive on the back of the vinyl is very tenacious, making it difficult to handle. If the vinyl folds over onto itself once you peel it from the backing, it is almost impossible to unseparate the parts without significantly distorting the shape. To combat this problem, and to make the graphics easier to handle, we use Transfer Tape!!
	This illustration shows the graphics in the above step being laid flat, and a sheet of transfer tape being applied to it. The grey shape is the transfer tape, and it is going on to the vinyl sticky side down.
	Here we see the transfer tape attached to the grahpics. When we are ready to apply we peel off the transfer tape to reveal...
	The sticky side of the transfer tape with our graphics attached, sticky side out. We can now apply our graphics to anything using the transfer tape to help us handle them. I used a lighter blue to indicate the sticky side of our graphics, where the white in this picture represents the back side of the transfer tape seen in the previous illustration.